Unchained Gratitude
by Manshiro
Summary: Without the past, there can be no future, even for a boy that had everything about him that existed in this world erased by fire. Everything but the word "Shirou" to describe himself. But where did that word come from? Why didn't it burn away also?
1. Forgotten Past

Prologue

"Don't leave the path so much darling!" A woman in her early thirties called out to a small, red-haired boy before he vanished into the under woods. Her worries were not unfounded. The forest around Mt. Fuji contained many caves one could wander into and not find out again. And a more tragic thing this forest was known for was as one of the most used spots for suicide.

No mother would want to have her child stumble over a half-decomposed body dangling from a tree.

The boy on the other hand barely listened to the warning before he advanced deeper into the veritable ocean of trees. The plantlife here was not cared for by human hands and almost seemed to be geared to impede a persons movement. The ground was covered by a dozen centimeters of dead leaves and decomposed wood, terrible footing for any kind of bigger animal. Above that were small mostly bramble-like bushes and the big trees shutting out most of the sunlight.

A normal forest mostly untouched by humans.

But such small obstacles were nothing compared to the boundless curiosity and energy inside a small child's body. Thus the redhead proceeded further into the thickets surrounding the highest mountain of Japan, squeezing beneath fallen trees and through thorns in search of adventure.

* * *

When the sun had passed its zenith, the small boy was still wandering through the ancient forest, not remembering the path back, unsure as to where he should go, the redhead still kept moving, certain that his steps will lead him back to his parent's side.

The undergrowth had turned into an almost impenetrable mixture of rotting wood and verdant vines that exhausted him with every step he took. No human hands had cleared out fallen trees here for at least decades.

Toiling through this harsh, for a child, environment made the boy lose his feeling of time and direction, stretching hours into years, making him question whether he would ever return home by afternoon.

A ray of hope shone down on him when he reached a cliff. Something he could use to find his way back. After all if you touched the wall of a labyrinth with one hand you couldn't get lost, or something like that, he remembered hearing on some TV show.

Following the cliff in one direction, the boy was soon rewarded with something that was not green or brown, but red. A color that didn't belong to nature in this season, meaning it had to be something man-made. Hastening his steps the, by now hungry and thirsty, boy reached a torii, a red shrine gate, standing in front of a cave going into the rock.

But the salvation he had looked for did not exist here.

The red had already faded greatly, the wood bleached under rain, wind and sun. Weathered tags of paper with unintelligible squiggles on them were torn or halfway pealed off from the pillars. No trace was left behind of a path leading to the torii and the cave from the forest. Nothing indicated that anyone regularly visited this place or any clue he could use to return home.

Exhausted, the redhead leaned against the cliff before sliding down into a sitting position.

With the sun slowly moving towards but not sinking yet, he could feel how it got colder and slightly darker. Especially from his left side where the cave was. It felt like the gaping hole in the rock face was sucking in the light and warmth of the surrounding area.

Having been told by his parents and the television that carelessly entering caves is dangerous he was hesitant, but something seemed to pull him into the void, latching onto him, one delicate ephemeral touch at a time.

As he entered the cave, the light seemed to vanish more with every step, enveloping him in a thick darkness. The black was so overwhelming and all-consuming that he was convinced he could literally smell it, feel it crawling down his throat.

Where before the time he had stumbled through the forest had seemed endless, it now was but a short glimpse for him. One by one, his senses left him. His sight went away first, enveloping his world in darkness, followed by the loss of his hearing, the silence crushing him like a giant boulder. When his sense of touch and balance began to sputter away, he completely lost orientation, unsure whether he was walking upright, crawling on the ground, or even moving at all. Heat and cold took turns, freezing him to the bone at one moment before burning his skin away the next, before this sense too stopped working.

The only thing that was left working in the end was his nose. He still believed he could smell the darkness forcing its way down his throat. But where before the blackness had been a thing of monolithic uniformity, the boy could now smell something different. The heavy scent of wet earth mixed with the freshness of an ocean breeze.

Directing numb limbs he wasn't even sure existed anymore towards that smell, the darkness seemed to lose its overwhelming oppressiveness. The boy felt his body return to his control step by step as he got closer to the source of the scent.

 ***Clink***

A metallic noise suddenly cut through the silent darkness.

"I-Is someone here?" the boy asked hesitantly.

 ***Clink** * * **Clink** *

A pair of glowing golden orbs opened to look at the young boy. The two spots of light in the darkness focused on him, tense seconds passing with the boy holding his breath, before his question was answered.

"Made to hold one, yet suddenly contains two.

Miracle or necessity?

Speak, child of man, what is your name."

The voice made him feel like a myriad of insects were squirming inside his body, he needed to vomit all of his organs out, and rip his own ears off. Yet, at the same time he felt safe and content as if he was cradled in his mothers arms, pure bliss transmitted via his eardrums.

"M-My name is XXXXX."

The golden eyes fixed him with burning intensity for another heartbeat.

"A child of man finding its way where man has denied passage,

treading a path where none is supposed to exist exist."

Darkness returned with the closing of both gleaming orbs.

"###### is who I am.

With names freely exchanged the pact is bound.

Your miracle shall be rewarded in kind when the time is right.

Until that day, fare well, my child of man."

With their reopening, the eyes turned the darkness into a world of gold. Before the boy's eyes could get used to the sudden illumination, he was blown away by something akin to a gust of wind, losing his sense of orientation completely once again.

* * *

A small boy who had run off to deep into the forest and got lost as a result was found, disoriented and confused, by a search group the day after he went missing.

He was brought to the hospital where his frantic parents were waiting for him. While the boy was being checked for injuries on the way to the hospital, it was noted that his eye-color didn't match the description. What should have been a plain brown was now an eerily light brown color bordering on gold.

Even after a series of extensive medical checks, no reason for the discoloration could be found and the boy was released from hospital after his mental state had returned to normal.

The family then returned to their home in the tranquil city of Fuyuki.

* * *

 **CLANG** cling

 **CLANG** cling

 **CLANG** cling

With each time the chains were strained, they lost some of their strength, their anchor point coming loose an infinitesimal bit at a time.

 **CLANG** cling

 **CLANG** cling

The path had been created.

 **CLANG** cling

With that miracle accomplished, the chains were but a small nuisance.

 **CLANG** cling

 **CLANG** cling

Nothing that couldn't be fixed with some strength and a dash of time.

 **CLANG** cling

And patience was about the only thing this imprisonment could teach.

 **CLANG** cling

 **CLANG** cling

 **CLANG** crack

"-Ahh."


	2. New Life

Chapter 01

Even though it was winter, an unforgiving sun hung in the sky, scorching everything on the earth beneath it. In contrast to the normal ball of thermonuclear fire breathing life into animals and plants alike, this sun was a black thing of supernatural origin. Condensed curses, overflowing hatred, a crystallization of every human vice in its purest form. A paradoxical hole in the world that spewed forth the purest taint upon the sleeping populace on the ground.

In a facsimile of the biblical god's purges, the earth and anything upon it was burnt beyond recognition, every living being drowned inside the deluge of evil. Old and young, men and women, good and bad, the mud gnawing away at their very existence did not discriminate in its destruction.

Some tried their best to escape, using loved ones as stepping stones. And died in agony, charred into lifeless husks beyond recognition.

Some tried to save others at the cost of their own life, only to realize that the person they desired to save was already beyond saving. And then died in anguish, their lamenting faces cemented by the heat cooking their flesh.

Some lost hope and sunk to the ground to pray for a miracle. But no god nor demon listened to their wishes as they were encircled by the fire which closed on them with deliberate slowness.

If you had to paint a "hell on earth", the current scenery would be an inspiration without equals. That is if there were to be a person able to experience this purgatory and still be able in both mind and body to create such a piece of artwork.

Dragging a body littered with all manners of burns and wounds, a small boy moved onward, toward survival. Over fallen buildings and corpses frozen in eternal agony his small feet took step after step, away from the cursed sun and closer to the exit of this hell. His stamina was already spent and every time he was about to falter in his steps and collapse like all the other people around him he threw away a part of himself instead to keep on moving.

Trivial things like memories went first. Cherished scenes of his childhood shattered like glass to allow him one more step. His friends vanished in return for another one. The figures of his father and his mother were traded for a couple more.

After all of these had been discarded, he needed more things to sacrifice, both his body and mind already used up as completely as possible without affecting his ability to take another step. So he reached deeper and found more he could use to fuel his progress. Pain left him first, soon followed by sadness and anger. All these negative emotions allowed for even more steps toward salvation, but not nearly enough. So he started throwing away the positive ones like happiness too, for what meaning did they have if, after everything he had already let go off, he would still die.

When all of these sacrifices still hadn't allowed him to be free of the unholy blessing slaughtering all people around him, he started carving away at the most integral part that made him him. Each chipped of fragment allowed him another step forward. Even when he had long since offered up the purpose of advancing to oblivion he still continued on. Step for step, winning against the curses trying to drag him down while losing everything in the process.

The boy stopped moving when he had thrown away everything he could without dying. Like a puppet whose strings were cut, the boy fell to the debris filled ground. In his downward tumble he had turned around leading to the redhead starring into the gray sky that was illuminated by the fires burning around him. Mindlessly, the glazed, golden eyes stared into the uniform expanse above him while what little life remained in it seeped from the boy's body. It was neither painful nor pleasant, both being

things he had thrown away to come this far, but somewhere deep inside him, there was a part of the boy that still clung to life. He did not know why, but a promise he didn't even remember made the shell of a human being cling to staying in the land of the living just a little bit longer.

One drop after the other, rain had started to fall onto the boy's face after an indeterminable amount of time. Dousing the fires around him, the gray clouds gradually lost the orange shine caused by the conflagration as it was replaced by a gentle dawn, almost as if nature itself was pulling a curtain on the disastrous spectacle that had happened around him. With the lightening of the sky, he felt his eyelids grow heavier and heavier, the last of his strength finally leaving the cannibalized husk he had become.

Just as he was about to close his eyes, the silhouette of a worn out man appeared in his line of sight. The black haired man looked worn out beyond measure, his equally dark eyes boring down on him with a frantic intensity and desperation. But all of that changed when what was left of the boy focused his eyes on the man. Tension left the man's face as his eyes grew soft and tears began to well up. What had before been a pained expression had instantly turned into a facsimile of happiness as tears welled up in his eyes.

He then muttered something, but the boy had no strength to listen to it at this point. His eyes were already beginning to close, focusing on the man having sapped them of what little energy they had left.

The last thing the boy saw before the world turned black was a beautiful light of purest gold.

* * *

He was now officially called Emiya Shirou, taking on the last name of the old man who had saved him and taking the only thing that faintly remained in his mind for his first name.

The red haired boy had no recollection about who he was before the fire, everything about his previous life including family wiped completely clean. Figuring his name by looking at who had lived at the site of the catastrophe apparently wouldn't work since many dead bodies that turned up were burned or otherwise disfigured beyond recognition. Or at least a lady in a suit with a clipboard who said she worked for the government said so. She bluntly told him that the chance of finding out who Shirou was without him remembering something was close to zero and that he would need to decide on a name for himself and what he wanted to do from now on. The last part was something she also asked the other children in the hospital room.

The at that point still nameless boy was visited by the man who had saved him and proposed for the boy to come with him. His past was blank, but the boy thought that he too wanted to smile like the man before him had done. So the boy who had vanished inside the flames without anyone to remember even his name was replaced by Emiya Shirou.

* * *

Fire blazed in the boy's eyes as he stood next to the wooden beam supporting the veranda's roof. He stared straight into the tired eyes of a middle aged man that sat on the edge.

"You're not wrong! If you have become too old to do it then don't worry, old man, I'll become an ally of justice in your place."

Hearing these words Emiya Kiritsugu once again felt his soul being saved by the boy he had rescued from the cursed ruins, his son, Emiya Shirou. When he was about to be irreparably crushed by the results of his actions, especially the completely meaningless loss of his wife, being able to save at least a single life in that catastrophe gave him the strength to live on. Even if he had lost everything else. Even if his body was eroded by the curses of the tainted Grail bit by bit. Even if with his crippled body he was unable to regain the only other person he held dear in the world.

Even so, the boy he had dragged out of the debris littered streets had given him a reason to hold on, to not give in to despair, to try and free Ilya despite failing every time, to live. And now that boy had vowed to do what he couldn't and save not the many at the cost of few, but to be a true ally of justice and save everyone. Kiritsugu knew from experience that such a wish was a curse that chipped away its holder at best but when he looked into those golden eyes, burning with determination, he couldn't tell Shirou that.

But at the same time, these eyes told him that, even though he had failed, even though he had given up on saving everyone, what he had striven to achieve was something worth striving for. The boy in front of him had saved him with but a couple of words.

But just the few of them were enough to bring peace to his heart that had been torn to pieces long ago on a tropic island.

With a satisfied smile on his face the once feared mercenary and magic user closed his eyes while listening to his adopted son rumbling on, never to open them again.

* * *

The death of his foster father had been a heavy blow for the young boy. Losing the only real foundation and constant he had in his life, the person who taught him just about everything he knew, and one of the few humans he had more than superficial emotional ties to, left Emiya Shirou depressed and unmotivated to move onward.

In the meantime, Fujimura Raiga, an old acquaintance of Kiritsugu, grandfather of the energetic Taiga who had become an informal part of the Emiya household, as well as the head of Fuyuki's Yakuza, had taken over all duties concerning his father's death such as arranging the funeral. In addition he smoothed over the issue of Shirou becoming an orphan once again with the local authorities, fulfilling Kiritsugu's last will of ensuring the redhead could stay in the house and continue his life without needing to worry about money until he completed high school.

The ceremony was a simple affair. A standard Buddhist burial that was only attended by Shirou himself, Raiga and his granddaughter, as well as a few of his underlings.

What was left of Emiya Kiritsugu, the man that had saved him, now lay beneath a black gravestone.

For Shirou, being at home was a constant reminder that induced a heartache. Although the Emiya property was big enough to be called a mansion, it had never felt empty before.

Now though, it lacked the subtle signs of his father's presence. A book that wasn't put back on the shelf, an empty cup of tea left standing on the table, the soft and lethargic sound of footsteps.

Without the person himself being there, Shirou noticed how much those little things played a part in his daily life.

To make matters worse, Shirou noticed how barren his home was of personal things. His father's room reflected his own in its simplicity. Just an empty room and a closet filled with well worn clothing. No pictures, no items that pointed to a hobby, not even a picture.

The redhead couldn't remember having ever seen a picture of his father anywhere around. Neither were there any of himself. He hadn't found that particularly strange or even noticed it before, but now it made itself painfully obvious.

Searching for any sort of memento, Shirou combed through the whole house without finding anything that could have been said to belong to Kiritsugu besides his share of the cutlery. When he was about to give up, the boy vaguely remembered that his father had stored some stuff in the storage shed a long time ago.

The inside of the shed was dusty and dark, it's only source of illumination being a small window just beneath the roof and the opened door. There were several boxes stacked away in the far part of the room which Shirou decided to look through. To his misgiving, they were mostly filled with unused cooking utensils, furniture, or books. Nothing of the manner would have liked to find.

Picking up the last box, a photograph fell to the ground. The paper had already started to turn yellow at the edges, but the color still seemed to be fine.

His father was shown on the picture, smiling happily -completely different from the serene smiles Shirou had seen him make before- along with a beautiful woman and a girl, both with snow white hair and blood red eyes. The girl was sitting on Kiritsugu's shoulders and clutched onto one of his hands he had extended upward for stability. His other arm was intertwined with the woman's and he held the a wired trigger, probably the camera's, in his hand. Shirou thought that subtitling the picture with "Happiness" if it was hung in a museum would have been fitting.

They were standing in front of snow topped trees, a mountain range in the background and a clear blue sky stretched overhead, but there was nothing that could give you a hint to the actual location. On the back of the picture was a continuous stream of the one logo and foreign script which was probably the default for the unprinted side of the paper used for printing the photos. Additionally, there was some kind of code consisting of numbers and letters there too.

Nothing he could use to find out more about the picture right now.

But that didn't matter.

Because Shirou now had a picture of his father. Even one where he was smiling. So his search for some kind of memento was a success.

* * *

The next day, the 12 year old boy ventured to the shopping district to get the picture framed. The only place in Miyama he knew of that sold frames or offered to frame photographs was a small shop that looked kind of run down. Shirou had never seen anyone enter or leave it when he had passed by in the past, the lights illuminating the displayed pictures being the only sign that it wasn't closed.

Pushing open the door, an annoying chime signaled Shirou's arrival to the clerk who was reading a book while sat behind his counter. Said man laid down his book and stood up before greeting the boy still holding the door open with one hand. He had a pair of glasses with a simple wire frame and a blue bandana hiding most of his black hair. The boy placed him to be somewhere in his mid thirties.

After Shirou stated his wish, the man took a quick glance at the photo before vanishing in a back room for a few seconds. He returned with a simple wooden frame in dark brown. After a few obviously practiced moves, the picture of Kiritsugu was firmly secured in the frame.

At a casual inquiry of Shirou about the code on the back of the picture, the clerk took a quick look at the boy before explaining that it was something the machines developing the pictures put there, but nothing that could help identify from when the picture was or where it was taken. The paper itself on the other hand was a lot more helpful for that. The unassuming clerk proved to be astonishingly well versed in his field of expertise as he recognized the logo printed on the backside of the photograph to belong to a chain of German photo studios. But even the professional couldn't tell Shirou more than that.

Receiving the framed picture, the redhead left after thanking and paying the helpful though slightly eccentric man.

Back home, Shirou placed the picture on a dresser in the living room.

* * *

Inside a room laid out with tatami mats and a framed banner spelling 'Chivalry' in artistic kanji brought to paper by skillful calligraphy an old man was sitting on a cushion while a red headed youth kneeled in front of him.

"Can you give me a job please, Gramps?" Shirou asked.

Fujimura Raiga silently watched the boy with an intense gaze before answering with a question.

"Why do you want a job now. Kiritsugu ensured that you would have no troubles until you finish your education."

"There is something I want to find. And I am going to need money to search for it."

"And it can't wait until you after you finished school?" the leader of the local 'chivalrous organization' continued probing while meeting the serious look of his ward with a piercing glare he had perfected over many years of wordlessly silencing his subordinates.

"I... I don't know." Shirou started his voice wavering a little bit and his eyes lost their focus on Raiga's. "I don't know what I'm going to find, when I'm going to find it or whether I'm going to find it at all. There is no rational reason I could put a finger on right now that I can't wait, just this... this feeling. I need to do this." While he was formulating these sentences, his voice had filled with conviction and his wandering eyes seemed to have found something before they returned to gazing into the old man's eyes.

The urgency behind this request was now completely clear to Raiga.

Shirou was, by no means, a normal child. Not with his past and his renewed loss of a parent. But more than that, the boy's personality was very different from the norm. He was helpful when given the chance, polite and informal at the same time, couldn't tell a lie to save his life, and his mannerisms made him appear extremely naive and belied his intelligence. Yet, the strangest part about him for a child was his lack of selfishness.

In the years Raiga had known the red haired boy not once had he seen him express a personal desire for something. A trait rarely found in anyone aside from old monks and certainly not in children who should chase after dreams of future wealth and fame.

For Shirou to openly say that he needed something, for himself, without having a reason for it was something the wizened old man wholeheartedly welcomed.

But Raiga still had to think about it while continuing the staring contest with the boy.

Kirtsugu did not leave him any instructions on how the boy should be raised one way or another, only to ensure the boy would turn into a man that could stand on his own two feet. It was the more practical aspects of Shirou's request that made him hesitate. The redhead was barely an adolescent, too young to work for more than a small allowance nowadays. And he would be for a few years yet. In other words, every halfway lucrative work he could get the boy would be shady at best. Finding something appropriate wouldn't be too much of a problem since Raiga directly or indirectly owned most of Fuyuki's shady businesses or was on good terms with their owners.

The question the old man had to ask himself whether he wanted to allow the young boy he had been intrusted to get a small glimpse of the abyss. It often changed how people viewed the world and swallowed some who couldn't stomach dealing with too much darkness on a daily basis.

Was he willing to expose the boy to it?

The tensed silence between the kneeling boy an Raiga had continued for more than a minute before the old man decided to bet on the not childlike child.

"Very well, you convinced me. As long as your academic results don't suffer too much from it I will introduce you to a couple of places." The tension in Shirou fell away and was replaced by a somewhat happy expression. "A word of warning though. Those who will employ you won't be lenient with you because you are a minor. They will mostly let you do boring and strenuous grunt work. You will be expected to be punctual as well as thorough and efficient with your work. Can you promise me to work like that without complaining?"

"Yes, I promise. Thank you very much!" the redhead replied.

* * *

As he had promised, Raiga had introduced Shirou to several businesses around Fuyuki where he could help out. In the mornings before school started there were fishing boats that needed a hand with unloading or flyers and newspapers that needed to be distributed. Come afternoon or evening there were some cafes and restaurants that didn't say no to an additional dishwasher.

But those were only the mostly legitimate jobs and did not regularly make up the main portion of the places Shirou worked at.

He had plethora of shady places that needed cleaning that had a hard time finding workers, love hotels for example. Jobs that nobody wanted to do if they had the choice because of the social stigma attached to the workplace.

Shirou also hadn't thought Fuyuki contained so many warehouses until he had to load and unload boxes into at least fifty of them. Mostly nondescript boxes of unknown content.

The redhead was aware that the chivalrous organization of Raiga was skirting the law in some places, like his employment, but wasn't exactly sure at what point he would be breaking his promise with Kiritsugu.

It was very confusing for a boy, who proclaimed himself to be an ally of justice, that he didn't know whether the Fujimura-gumi was good or bad. If they just broke the law and made everyone around them miserable it would be easy to say they are bad. But most of the people he worked with were somewhat happy with their jobs, Raiga's subordinates didn't get violent and helped the police in catching pickpockets, and he faintly remembered the spare housing they had organized quickly and without any paperwork for those who had lost their property in the fire.

After thinking about it for a while, Shirou arrived at the conclusion that this moral problem was too difficult for him to resolve in its entirety, so he would just do his best to try and correct any great wrongs he came upon. The one thing this conundrum made crystal clear to Shirou was that being an ally of justice and adhering to the law were not one and the same.

* * *

A short while after Shirou had recovered from his melancholy and started working, Taiga had started to insistently nag him since he wasn't around as much and she was bored. She used Kendo training as a preparation for his future work for her grandfather, something the three of them knew was rather unlikely, as an excuse and began thrashing him with her trusty shinai on a regular basis. Remembering again the promise he had given the old man and then lost track of after his death, Shirou somewhat reluctantly agreed to let Taiga "train" him in Kendo. After all, an ally of justice without the power to make his justice reality was no ally of justice.

The "lessons" the older girl gave him in exchange for the demand of getting fed were painful but educational as Taiga only possessed a bare minimum of talent in teaching the way of the sword and didn't know how to hold back very well. Combined with her form deviating wildly from what could be considered "standard" Kendo, Shirou learned how to avoid getting hit and hitting back when he could see an opening rather than any kind of formal stances.

Having fun teaching the little redhead how to avoid being a punching bag on the other hand only strengthened the girl's wish to become a teacher in the future.

But even as painful as the welts on practically every part of his body inflicted by Fuyuki's Tiger were, they paled in comparison to his diligent practice of magecraft. Each night before he went to bed was accompanied by the pain of replacing his spine with a searing steel rod with barely minimal gains in usefulness of his ability. Nonetheless, Shirou continued day in day out with his routine because he was convinced that as along as he continued to proceed even just by the smallest bit, he would certainly be able to reach mastery through endless repetition. Allies of justice always did.

* * *

 **CLANG** **CRACK**

With a final pull, the last chain was ripped free from its bearing in the bedrock.

"Ahh, finally."

It had taken an indeterminable amount of time in the darkness, wearing down unbreakable chains bit by bit, link by link, until at last the weakest of them, the inevitable flaw in a construct of perfection, failed one by one, returning the free use of another limb each time. And now, now all bindings holding her down were broken. The only thing left was to follow the path forged.

Freedom was once more within her grasp.

* * *

The seasons had run through a little bit more than a full cycle while Shirou continued his eventful uneventful life of working and training. Since he didn't have any particular hobbies besides his slight obsession over cooking, born of necessity, Taiga was worried that when she left for university he would only spend his time working, wasting away his youth, so she made him promise to find something to spend his time on that wasn't work.

At first he was troubled about this until he entered middle school and tried to join the Kendo club. But before even officially applying, the redhead knew that it wouldn't be the same as his training with Taiga. You could say many belittling things about the childish woman, but her proficiency with a shinai was top class. Compared to her, the members of a middle school Kendo club were just too slow. In the sparring match against the club's captain, to get a feel for the sport, he had practically run circles around the boy. Additionally, he felt that the stances they showed him felt too rigid to be used effectively. Since it didn't seem like he could learn much in this club he hadn't already learned from Taiga one way or another, Shirou decided to take a look at the other sports clubs. Culture clubs didn't really interest him.

Ball sports didn't have any practical aspect and he lacked the passion for them. Track and field would have been interesting if he wasn't already one of the fastest runners in his class. The Judo and Karate clubs might have been his choice if he hadn't passed by the archery club before visiting them. Shirou was attracted by the fact that it combined the focus of meditation with marksmanship, a useful application for someone aiming to be a hero like him. Here, Shirou's nightly training of keeping a clear mind even while under severe pain paid off unexpectedly well as he took to archery like a fish to water, hitting the bullseye almost every time after a few weeks of learning the correct steps.

In the scant pieces of Shirou's free time that remained, he began to tinker around with all kinds of mechanic and electronic appliances as he used them as easy learning material for the only supernatural ability he could get to work somewhat reliably. Raiga got the redhead to care for his beloved bikes after seeing how the boy had fixed Kirtsugu's old motorcycle, which had been gathering dust, rust, and rot for years, up to mint condition. It was more upstanding work than most of the other things he organized for the boy, and the old man thought it would be good if Shirou took up driving too, trying to pass on the torch of his hobby to the next generation.

* * *

On a frosty winter morning, shortly after Shirou had finished his usual jogging run through the neighborhood and showered, he heard someone knocking on the gate to the estate. A slight oddity considering the chime was right beside it, but his ears were good enough to hear it nonetheless, so it didn't make that much difference to him. Slipping into his shoes and throwing the blazer of his school uniform on, he walked the path towards the gate avoiding the small remnants of snow that had fallen last night.

His breath was visible in the cold air as he reached out to open the heavy wooden doors. A small gust of wind blew in Shirou's face the moment he opened the door, making him avert his face for a moment. Before he pried his eyes open again he heard the metallic rustle of chains and felt the brush of fingers touching his chin.

"I found you."


End file.
